


You Count

by greenfairy13



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 18:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16938543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenfairy13/pseuds/greenfairy13
Summary: Jim spends his holidays with his unborn daughter,watching the fireworks with her. Oswald decides to join them.For the prompt "fireworks".





	You Count

**Author's Note:**

> I live for comments.

Gotham is wrapped in a thick blanket of ice and snow. This city, crafted from blood and violence, lies silently coated in winter’s achromatic innocence.  

For a few glorious moments, neither footsteps nor mud taint the fragile perfection. Nothing is as pure, nothing is as ephemeral. 

Jim wants to touch the pristine surface, wants to mess it up and begrime it with the pain that constantly pulls at the strings of his heart. He had been a good man, once. As pure as the snow. A man, who had been dreaming of white fences and children and a fair world. Now, he dreams of pain and torment.

The Gotham cemetery is mute. Her victims don’t make a sound, they just are - a silent memorial of the lives lost and wasted. 

Jim comes here every Christmas Eve and every New Year’s Eve. He walks up the hills, enjoying in the silence and the lack of Gotham’s ever present traffic noise. Stopping at Gertrud Kapelput’s tombstone, he pulls out the weed and places a single magnolia on her grave. It feels right to start his visit here. After all, it had been her death that set so many actions into motion, ultimately leading to Jim spending his holidays at a graveyard. 

The detective walks on, looks for his Christine. The daughter that should have been. The never-was child, the wasted potential and shattered hope of a city so cruel, it raises the reckless into the sky and drags the innocent into the deepest pits of hell. Gotham has ruined him, Jim knows that now. But it’s too late. It has always been too late. 

After Lee, there had been nobody. Nobody who would have counted anyways. Nobody whose names he wants to remember. All these arms he had wrapped himself in, all these faceless bodies he had used for comfort, they have never been able to soothe the aching or ease the longing. 

Every Christmas, Jim brings his unborn daughter all sorts of toys. He puts them on her gravestone: dolls and little cars, teddy bears and puzzles, for he doesn’t know what she would have wanted and never will. He tells her what he would have given Lee for Christmas, tells her how they would have decorated the tree, narrates the fairy tales he's never going to read out at a bed. He tells her how sorry he is. 

On New Year’s Eve, he brings her four-leaved clovers and talks to her about the classes she would be taking next year. He tells her how she still is his little baby girl. Imagines how she’d by now insist on being all grown up. She’d be seven now. 

But she isn’t. She’s a little baby girl in a little baby coffin. Jim didn't knew a coffin could be so small - like a gift box. 

In the distance, a twig breaks. Jim hears footsteps approaching and wonders who else would spend New Year’s Eve at the depressing location. Frowning, he turns around to be greeted with the sight of the city’s most infamous gangster. 

Oswald Cobblepot, wrapped in a marvellous black fox fur coat and decorated with a matching hat, limps determinedly towards him. He’s holding the magnolia in his left hand, the one that isn’t busy clutching his cane, disdain written all over his features. 

“What do you think are you playing at?” he hisses furiously, once he’s within earshot. The man is practically vibrating from rage and Jim wonders if that has been finally it. For whatever reason the gangster let him stay alive so far. The detective wonders if he’s finally run out of luck and going to be a permanent resident of the Gotham cemetery. 

The mobster crumples the flower in his fist, throws it to the ground and stomps on it for good measure. Sometimes Oswald is like a three year old kid, Jim thinks. A kid that happily picks the wings off flies. 

The other man waddles closer, steps unabashedly into Jim’s personal space and the detective lets him. Oswald has clearly overexerted himself. His pale cheeks are flushed and there’s sweat visible on his forehead. Jim guesses the ache in his leg must have gotten much worse over the years. 

The gangster grits his teeth. Mouth pressed into a thin line, he spits out, “how dare you insult my mother’s memory?!”

The detective is startled. Too startled to respond, so Oswald simply rages on. 

“For years, some lunatic has been bringing flowers to my mother’s grave. Always her favorites, always magnolias. My goons found out nothing, nobody could decipher the hidden message and now it turns out it was you all along? What is the meaning of this? Are you trying to mock me?” Oswald gasps for air. He’s struggling to breathe in his self-righteous anger and suddenly, everything clicks into place.

“I’m sorry,” Jim murmurs holding up his hands placatingly. “I didn’t mean to insult your mother’s memory,” he whispers. “I had no ill intentions. I just thought it was nice.”

It’s now Oswald’s turn to be startled. The gangster’s mouth drops open at the sincere apology and for a moment, he’s at a loss for words. 

The kingpin aims for haughtiness then. “What are you doing here, of all places?” he asks condescendingly. 

“Spending New Year’s with my daughter,” Jim replies simply and steps aside for Oswald to inspect the gravestone. Christine Gordon-Thompkins, it simply reads. 

For once, Oswald doesn’t make an insulting remark. His eyes go wide and he only exhales a shuddering breath. 

“I’ll be watching the fireworks with her,” Jim explains with a small smile. “She likes them,” he adds fondly. He might not know if his daughter might have prefered cars or dolls, but he’s certain she would have enjoyed the lights shining over Gotham. 

Oswald shakes his head, turns to leave. It's the moment Jim decides to stops him. “You could stay with us,” he whispers, barely audible and the murderer halts in his tracks. 

The two of them have been broken and bent and beaten into submission by this city time and time again. They both have lost so much. Yet, they both still care deeply for the dream and the delusion that is Gotham. The detective thinks it's fitting they'd celebrate together. 

Jim watches the fireworks with his daughter and his gangster then. Witnesses how Gotham’s sky explodes in a burst of gold, fire and noise. He describes the patterns that form on the pitch black heaven to Christine and how they shed a moment of hope and faith in the future over the doomed city. He doesn’t tell her the promise is ultimately always being betrayed.

Oswald takes his hand when his voice breaks off. Jim entwines their fingers, presses back and for one perfect moment, he forgets why he’s supposed to hate the criminal beside him. A little shiver runs through the lean man and the detective wraps his arms around the gangster and pulls him close, buries his nose in this soft hair. 

Finally, Jim is with someone who counts. 


End file.
